Of course, there are very many ways of using technology to create art – and I only know a tiny bit really – enough to create the work I want to create…. So we can’t cover absolutely all digital techniques here!

But I do want to share with you how I use digital art technologies to create art – and why I’m certain that this art form should definitely be considered ‘real art’.

My own artworks all actually start well away from the computer, which isn't always the case for digital art, but is still quite common these days as artists look to take the best of traditional and digital techniques.
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I sit down with pen and paper – I draw and add colour. I use a black fine-liner pen, and Promarker inks. I find drawing in this traditional way allows me to draw naturally and in my own particular drawing style.

Easy artist colour theory for you to understand how to use colour practically in your art.

​Colour is one of those things that attracts us to creating art – it’s exciting and emotional and it gives our drawings life and personality.

It looks so easy… so why is it sometimes so damn hard?!

Let’s start by looking at some easy ways to add colour to our art –

• some ways to create realistic looking colour
• easy artist colour palette ideas
• using colour to enhance your drawing
• adding colour with markers – there’s a separate PDF resource for this here…
• adding colour with markers – there’s a separate PDF resource for this here…
• adding colour with coloured pencils or watercolour pencils – there’s a separate PDF resource for this here…
• adding colour with pastels – there’s a separate PDF resource for this here…
• adding colour with oil pastels – there’s a separate PDF resource for this here…

In this blog post, we’ll learn techniques for using colour to add form, depth, light, shade, and shape to your drawing – as well as the excitement of colour!

This is important, because as well as being an expressive tool to give emotion, feeling, and excitement to your artwork, colour is also a tool that you can use to give your artwork shape, depth, and form.

In the earliest parts of our drawing, we spend time looking at our subject matter and not our page so that we can draw the outline correctly…

We’ve done lots of hard work with our basic line drawing and may even have added texture and shade (mark making) with pen, pencil, or charcoal. So now we have that already in place, it’s the time to really immerse ourselves in the colour on the page or canvas.

You can apply the following ideas to any medium that you choose to use to apply colour to your artwork.
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And you can adapt the ideas to suit your own style – and I would encourage you to do so.

Colourful sparrows art by Lotti Brown...

My sweet sparrows art was inspired by the sparrows in my own garden - we have a little flock of about 12 house sparrows, male and female, who feed (virtually all day, every day) at the feeder in our plum tree.

I think they might live in there too, as the plum tree is thick with ivy and creepers and it's safe for them to hide out or roost. 

They perch across all the branches of the tree, like fluttering decorations, keeping watch and taking turns...

They're so funny to see with their swift, twittering arguments around the feeder. We even had once hanging completely upside down at the feeder to stop being bombarded from his mates from the ferns beneath...

It was quite effective until the little birds got wise and while he was still hanging upside down, they swooped down from above to oust him from the feeder. I haven't seen him try it again since!

Choosing colour for an artwork or design can be a really fun part of the creative process, but sometimes the sheer amount of colour choice available is just a little bit overwhelming, so here's a few tips I've learned over the past few years to help...
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Of course, if the artwork or design is of flowers, animals, or birds I find the the natural colour of the flower, animal or bird is a great place to start, but for more abstract designs, or ones where you don't necessarily want the colours to look true to life, you can start by picking colours out of a favourite photo...
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Here are some I tried from some of my own holiday snaps...